{"id":923264,"date":"2026-10-06T22:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T22:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/923264\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T22:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T22:06:10","slug":"the-table-day-and-night-review-a-frothy-romantic-anthology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/923264\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Table: Day and Night’ Review: A Frothy Romantic Anthology"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAn artisanal caf\u00e9 in a quiet yet fashionable Seoul neighborhood provides the setting for a quartet of seasonal vignettes in Kim Jong-kwan<\/a>\u2019s romantic anthology \u201cThe Table: Day and Night<\/a>.\u201d Opening this year\u2019s Busan Film Festival<\/a>, the film \u2014 with its star-studded ensemble including Kim Min-ha<\/a>, Shim Eun-kyung and Han Sun-hwa \u2014 will ensure a glitzy curtain-raiser for South Korea\u2019s premier cinematic event, but beyond this high-profile debut, Kim\u2019s frothy, fitfully engaging effort will likely be met with a muted response further afield, limited only to specialist Asian showcases.<\/p>\n

\n\tAn expansion of the director\u2019s 2016 effort, \u201cThe Table,\u201d which saw four different couples meet for coffee at the same table, in the same caf\u00e9, over the course of a single day, \u201cThe Table: Day and Night\u201d is similarly constructed around four chance encounters that take place at a single, stylish coffeehouse. This time the meetups are spread across a number of weeks, as the summer heat cools gently into autumn, while the interludes themselves attempt to broach something more complex than simple relationship woes.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first chapter, titled \u201cA Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream,\u201d details the fairytale meeting between two customers, Hyeon-oh (Joo Jong-hyuk), a young man with a passion for rebuilding old watches, and Yoo-jin (Kim Min-ha), a forlorn dreamer, whose inherited antique timepiece has not worked in years. \u201cStill Ourselves,\u201d the second vignette, treads a precarious line between comic and tragic, when Young-min (Chang Ryul) is accosted by the beautiful yet increasingly unstable Sang-mi (Han Sun-hwa), a former middle-school friend who accuses him of not remembering her, before begging that he protect her from an encroaching unseen enemy.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the third story, \u201cT.P.A.,\u201d successful web novelist Hye-jin (Shim Eun-kyung) is wooed by Dong-nam (Lee Hee-jun), a passionate filmmaker who pleads for her permission to adapt one of her most popular works for the big screen, while in the final tale, an aspiring pop idol, Nakyung (Jeon So-young) and her childhood boyfriend Jong-su (Kim Dong-hwi) discuss the fate of their adolescent relationship.<\/p>\n

\n\tKim has grown steadily in stature within the industry, since his acclaimed 2004 short \u201cHow to Operate a Polaroid Camera.\u201d He has contributed to a number of anthologies and omnibuses, including the Netflix project \u201cPersona\u201d (2019) and the Hemingway-inspired crime collection \u201cThe Killers\u201d (2024), while many of his feature films, such as \u201cWorst Woman\u201d (2016) and \u201cFrosted Window\u201d (2025), are likewise structured around a series of loosely connected vignettes. <\/p>\n

\n\tHe is clearly drawn to telling stories in snapshots, and exploring characters through fleeting moments and passing interactions. The perpetually populated tables of a busy urban eatery provide the perfect setting for these micro-dramas to play out, while lending a narrative consistency to the piece as a whole, even as the tone of each tale is allowed to flail wildly from the implausible to the pragmatic, the fantastical to the flirtatious.<\/p>\n

\n\tNever allowing the action to bleed beyond the boundaries of the establishment, Kim invites the suggestion that the caf\u00e9 itself plays cupid to those that chance to cross its threshold \u2014 a notion made all the more plausible when novelist Hye-jin begins casually concocting a workplace romance from her own imagination, between the caf\u00e9\u2019s ever-present baristas. As is true throughout Kim\u2019s work, the women prove infinitely more interesting protagonists than their male counterparts.<\/p>\n

\n\tKim Min-ha, a familiar face to many from her work on Apple TV\u2019s \u201cPachinko,\u201d is given little opportunity to shine in a segment that promises much, but leaves its potential unexplored. Shim (last seen in Sho Miyake\u2019s Locarno winner \u201cTwo Seasons, Two Strangers\u201d) portrays Hye-jin as a formidable artist, confident in her vision and stature within a male-dominated industry, even when she allows Dong-nam\u2019s charm offensive to gain ground. Han\u2019s Sang-mi is a similarly captivating presence onscreen, a bundle of nervous energy on the brink of exploding, captured brilliantly by one of Korea\u2019s most consistently versatile emerging talents.<\/p>\n

\n\tMaster DP Kim Ji-yong, the man responsible for such ravishing visual delights as Park Chan-wook\u2019s \u201cDecision to Leave\u201d and Lee Chang-dong\u2019s current awards player \u201cPossible Love,\u201d shoots this hipster hideaway together with Lee Ju-yeon, in warm, inviting hues that come close to conjuring the scent of freshly roasted beans. The walls are decorated in eye-catching oil paintings of enigmatic, forlorn individuals who compose themselves in much the same manner as the caf\u00e9\u2019s real clientele.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhether these portraits represent past patrons, whose stories once unspooled over these same steaming cups, Kim declines to comment. One can\u2019t help but feel, as the film closes with a montage of empty, inviting tables, that he is a storyteller more interested in the potential of this space to host endless fascinating characters, dramas and romances from one moment to the next, than in actually doing justice to the ones he has brought to life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An artisanal caf\u00e9 in a quiet yet fashionable Seoul neighborhood provides the setting for a quartet of seasonal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":923265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[81237,49,48,75,300300,317686,337,300302],"class_list":["post-923264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-busan-film-festival","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-kim-jong-kwan","tag-kim-min-ha","tag-movies","tag-the-table-day-and-night"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}